Orange Hair Phobia
by Lady Orient
Summary: On a mission, Ken is captured. Schuldig messes with his mind and causes him to slip into a catatonic state. But Weiss doesn't know that, all they know is that he must be found. And to top it all off Weiss must protect the Sohma boys and find Kyo and Ken
1. Messed Up Kitties

AN: I am an insane author with vengeance for correct spelling in foreign languages. So my nameless, faceless muse suggested that I have a little rant before we get into the story. Weiβ being one of my favorite animes, I must say that so many people have a problem spelling any of the names correctly. First off, our favorite assassin group, White is spelled Weiβ; an alternative way to spell it is Weiss. Their boss's name is Kritiker. Their enemies, our other favorite assassin group, Black is spelled Schwarz. Schwarz's boss 'Estet' is 'eszett' spelled β just like that, points to the weird letter, nothing more. Schuldig, you know the guy with orangey hair? Yeah him. His name is spelled Schuldig, yeah, just like that, and it means guilty. I speak, read and write German fluently so I am well acquainted with the spellings of such words. If you have any questions email me.

Also I thought you might like to know, since I have it on good authority that Omi means ocean or water, Nagi means star, and Aya's real name, Ran, means orchid. Oh, and the true and correct spelling of what we call bishounen is bishileö and is pronounced bi-she-reo.

Warning: This is a YAOI fic. There will be slash relationships and hopefully a good lemon or two.

Disclaimer: I do not own either anime or manga. Regretfully I will have to say that they belong to their creators or they would be chained to the wall of my basement for further bishileö exploration (you can decide what that means)

"Deny these Dark Beasts their tomorrow."

The screen showed snow. A slim, manicured hand reached up and turned off the screen.

"Who's in?"

Schrr… "This mission is so weird…I mean, people who turn into animals of the zodiac. What do you think, Siberian? Siberian…Hidaka…Ken!?!" the headphone crackled.

"What Bombay?" The brunette, crouching in the dark over a load of C4, answered.

"…Are you even paying attention to what you're supposed to be doing?"

"I could ask you the same, Bombay. Currently I'm setting explosives in on of the westward, load bearing walls."

"Oh…Sorry…Abyssinian is nearing the target and Balinese has just found the prisoners and is relieving them of their burdens…"

"And you?"

"I'm hacking into the mainframe so I can pick up that data Persia wants…"

"Copied. I'll meet you down there in a few minutes."

"…Alright. Over and out."

The brunette clicked off his communicator and remained in radio silence so that he could finish the precise splicing the placing the C4 needed. He had removed his bugnuks to be able to deal with the small wires. He was absorbed in the bombs so that he would not inadvertently set them off early.

"Kommen Sie bitte weg von den Bomben(1)," a new voice said.

The brunette froze. Shit. Caught like a mouse in a trap. The young man slowly rose to his feet. He put his hands, slowly, in the air while cautiously turning around. He moved toward the voice.

There was a chance that he could save Wei and the prisoners. The only thing would be that he would have to sacrifice himself. Ken only hoped that his attacker didn't speak Japanese. Ken managed to depress the radio switch on his cheek with his tongue. It crackled for a minute and then fuzzed.

"Siberian… You back online?"

"Omittchi. Evacuate, everyone."

"Ken?"

"Do it now!"

The German guard stared at Ken as if he were an alien. He raised his gun. "Sag nichts mehr, order ich schiesse dich(2)."

Ken nodded once to show he understood. There were some good things to having a German telepath around. What he couldn't understand was, why under the sun would someone hire guards that spoke only German in the center of Japan?

"Du bist kein Deutscher, na(3)?" the guard asked.

Ken shook his head. Why would I be, he screamed inside. He was thankful though; the German's babbling was buying him some time. He hoped he could keep the man babbling to ensure that his comrades and those entrusted him got away safely…

"Was machst du hier? Du darfst sprechen(4)."

Of course I'm allowed to speak when you ask a question like that, Ken yelled in his head.

"Wie siehts aus(5)?" His accent was horrible, but he was understandable.

"Na, gut dann, machs so(6)."

The German shot the gun. The bullet buried itself deep in Ken's shoulder. He grunted and fell forward on one knee. Barley conscious, he managed to be sure that he did not fall onto the explosives.

The German came over and made to pick Ken up. Ken tried to fight but only managed to rip his shoulder wound open even further. The German just smiled, an evil smile that told Ken that there was worse to come.

"Schuldig, ich hab mich ein Kätzchen gefangen(7)."

'_Echt Hans? Oh, ja gut. Ich nehms von hier(8).'_

That voice! Like heated silk on his skin, it boded no good.

'_Looks like I've got a little kitty on my hands, eh Siberian?'_

"Get out of my head Mastermind."

'_NO, not until I've shown you a little picture album I've put together for you. Hihi'_

Pictures began to flash through Ken's mind. It was an outsider's view of his first fight with Aya, the redhead bloody and beginning to pant. Omi flashed in front of his face, a shiner just showing on that tender young skin. That had been he first time his temper had slipped around the teen. He also saw Yohji bared to the waist with his shiny wavy blond hair unbound, limp, bedraggled and tangled. Open handed marks, nail furrows and bite marks bruised his skin an angry red. That had been the time Ken had begun to lose his sanity. Weiβ had helped him through those times, but they all bore scars, they always would, and Ken still felt guilty. He wanted to hide from it, his mind pulled away from the images Schuldig brought to the fore. He backed away from it. His mind pulled away so far he ad no connection to reality in the safe blankness he found.

Even from a distance Schuldig could tell that he was succumbing to the mind send. He told the guard to bring Ken to him. But what he could not know was that Ken's body would tighten up as he sank into the last vestiges of a catatonic state and that Ken had a detonator in his hand.

_KA-BOOOOOOM!_

"Kyo!"

A teal poof went up around one of the young men standing outside of the building. In the man's place stood a large black dog. Another poof surrounded the younger man beside him and a small white rat replaced him. The other three young men just stared at them.

"Shigurei" the rat said. "He's gone. As much as I did not like him, I did not want for him to die."

"I know, Yuki. All we can do is pray that he managed to escape."

The Shigurei/dog turned to the three assassins. They were staring at the two zodiac animals.

"I wouldn't stare if I were you," he said. "Something might happen that you would not want to—

POOF!

"—See."

Yohji's and Aya's jaws dropped and their noses dribbled blood as they saw the man before them. Omi was seemingly the only one not affected by this view.

"He warned you," murmured the rat.

POOF!

Omi fainted at the 'beautiful'sight before him. The buck-naked silver haired young man before him caught him.

In a portion of the building that had not blown up, a small orange cat slinked about trying to find a way out of the place. Around the bend of a corner he could see a shaft of light. He could also hear voices, but from the distance, he could not make out the words of the speakers.

He bounded silently down the corridor.

"Bring him here," said one masculine voice.

"Was soll ich mit ihm machen, Herr Schuldig?(9)"

That was not in a language the cat could understand. The first voice replied in the same foreign language. They spoke on for a while. Kyo, the cat, then hears a door partially close. The shaft of light on the wall narrowed. There were footsteps and two voices neared him.

Kyo hugged against the wall as the two men passed him. By the meager light, he saw a flash of orange hair. Then the footsteps faded down the hall.

The orange cat slinked around the corner and zipped straight for the slightly opened door. The brightness of the light in the room nearly blinded him as he stepped inside. There was a table that he could not see the top of and what looked like and IV bag on a stand next to it. There was also a hat rack full of clothing and a rank pair of sneakers on the floor. Kyo was wishing that he could see the top of the alluring table. It had caught his attention and—POOF!

That couldn't have had better timing, except for the fact that he was bared to his toes. At least he could see the top of the table now. What he was seeing was taking his breath away.

It wasn't the fact that the brunette was handsome, and he was, it was that his eyes were open in a vacant pupil-less stare. Not a muscle twitched except for the gentle in out of his chest. His arms and legs were strapped to the table in a spread-eagle position. Beside those facts, what really caught his attention was that the guy was wearing only a pair of kiss-marked boxers. (Yummy Ken!) Kyo also caught a whiff of some floral scent coming off his skin.

The clothing on the rack must belong to the young man, Kyo thought. It looked about the right size. He wondered who the man was. He had no time to ponder the fact because he could hear someone coming down the hall in the direction of the room. Kyo ducked under the table and secreted himself under its surface so that his body could not be seen by anyone that entered the room.

Sure enough the feet came into the room. They were relatively small feet encased in brown leather oxfords. But Kyo wasn't paying much attention to anything but the motion of the table. It was being moved, moved out of the room that it was in and down the hallway that Kyo had just escaped from. The feet pushed the table a little ways down the hall and into another room. All Kyo could see were the feet causing the motion and the bottoms of several cabinets lining the walls.

The table was set up in the room and the small feet left. Kyo cautiously peeked out from under the edge of the table. There looked to be no one in the room or any cameras around the place.

"Well damn! Now I'm stuck in this place even worse with no clothes," he raved and turned to the young man on the table. "It's all your fault."

After Omi had recovered from his faint, and Yuki and Shigurei had dressed themselves, the remaining members of Weiβ found themselves with two men adamant in retrieving their relative from the hands of β and Schwarz. Aya was a little nervous about bringing the men to their base of operations, but Yohji and Omi managed to talk him into it. So they retired to the Koneko no Sume Ie (10).

Shigure snickered at the cover they obviously used. Assassin vigilantes as florists? Yuki just lightly hit him over the head. He thought it was a cute idea and he could see them wandering around the little shop in the brightly colored aprons hanging on the wall.

The assassins led the Zodiacs down to the mission room in the basement. Shigurei and Yuki just stared at all of the equipment that was stashed there. There had to be at least three computers with enough spare parts to build a fourth. There were practice staves, an ammunition locker and all kinds of cleaning solution for their gear.

Aya, Yohji and Omi began to remove all of the things that were covered in gore and anything else that needed cleaning off of their clothing and weapons. Omi cracked the cases of his darts into a toxic waste container and dumped them into a bucket of cleaning solution. He settled down in front of the computer screen and tapped away at the keyboard, already looking at ways to infiltrate the building they had not blown up. Aya lay his katana on a worktable and shrugged out of his trench coat and boots. He then pulled out rags and cleaning solution from a cabinet and set to work on his blade. Youji dropped his wire into the same bucket of cleaning solution as Omi's darts, slid his sunglasses to his hair and peeled out of his trench coat.

He turned to Shigurei and Yuki, "You boys make yourselves comfortable on the sofa while I fetch all of you gorgeous things something to drink."

1."Please move away from the bombs."

2."Don't say anything else or I'll shoot you."

3."You're not German, are you?"

4."What are you doing here. You are allowed to speak."

5."What does it look like?"

6."Fine then, have it your way."

7."Schuldig, I captured a kitten."

8.'Really Hans? Oh goodie!"

9."What should I do with him, Mr. Schuldig?"

10.Kitten in the House


	2. Lost, but Alive

Kyo crouched underneath the examining table while several men shuffled around the room and murmured amongst themselves. Kyo couldn't understand them, but he could tell from the way that a few of them cackled with glee that it couldn't be good. After hours of carts rolling in and out, IV lines being changed, and things he couldn't explain, all of the people left.

Carefully Kyo crept out from under the table and stiffly straightened out. He turned slowly, still stretching muscles cramped for too long, to rest his gaze on the young man lying on the table. He looked no different than he had before; his eyes were still vacant and lacking pupils, limbs resting slackly at his sides. The doctors had put a hospital gown on the body though, almost as if to give him some modesty. Kyo wished he had one too. Standing around naked was getting on his nerves.

Not really paying attention to his motions, he slid his hand into the slack one resting on the table. He stroked his fingers gently over the abraded knuckles and the long, thin bones of the slender hand. And the hand squeezed his, nearly shocking Kyo out of his skin. Kyo stared at the hand that tightened around his and slowly released. There had to be somebody home to accomplish that feat of muscular control, and yet when he looked up at the delicate face, there was no light in the sea green eyes. Seeing nothing else to do Kyo squeezed back.

Yohji, who had presumably gone to fetch drinks for them, had disappeared with Shigure to enjoy a smoke outside. Aya and Omi settled one of their guests on the couch in the mission room. Yuki stared around himself at the high tech equipment that was housed his rescuers basement. It amazed him to no end that the assassins were also florists during the day. And when they were at home they seemed the least likely candidates for assassins, though they were also at the bottom of the list for florists as well.

"Tea?" Omi inquired of him, proffering a teapot and cup. Yuki nodded wordlessly. Omi poured the fragrant green beverage into the American style mug and handed it to the Zodiac. Aya sat across from Yuki on a solitary chair he had moved there. Omi handed him a mug of tea without asking and then poured himself some and took a seat beside Yuki on the sofa.

"So tell us about yourself, Yuki." Omi said in a soft, childish voice.

"What would you like to know?"

"Everything, where are you from, where did you go to school, who's your best friend, and most importantly, how did you transform?"

"It's a long story," interjected Shigure as he and Yohji came down the stairs into the mission room.

After spending quite some time alone in the freaky psychiatric ward, of the freaky hospital in which Kyo had found himself, he discovered his way around and knew how to avoid being found out. Whenever he heard footsteps in the hall, the cat-man hid himself under the bed of his wayward companion. Not that he was much of a companion. He had heard the 'doctors' speaking about the patient the other day and they had referred to him as being catatonic, a state in which the mind is locked within the body to protect it from its fears. Eventually he was supposed to come out of it but that could take years if what the doctors said was worth anything.

Kyo slinked out into the hallway in the gown he had managed to appropriate from the stores he had found in one of the hall closets. Peaking around carefully, he padded on silent feet to the back of the cafeteria. No one would be there at this time of night, all of the people who worked there having gone home. Being the cat that he was, Kyo got into the kitchen with no one the wiser. The vacated room looked freakishly like a torture chamber with all of the shining stainless steel surfaces. Peeking around from where he was Kyo found the rice cooker unmoved since the last time he had been there. Snatching a clean bowl off the stack by the wall Kyo filled up the shallow dish almost to overflowing. Having accomplished the main objective without interruption Kyo made his way to the refrigerators. He found little that looked appetizing, for there were a lot of leeks in there. Finally he snatched up a cut of fish that was likely for the head honcho's morning sushi.

Kyo smirked to himself all the way back to the room where his vacant eyed buddy was strapped to a table. He crouched by the table and began to munch on the tuna he had scrounged. After having swallowed the first bite, Kyo took a smaller bite into his mouth and chewed it into mush. He had found that if he pre-chewed the food and then put it into his friend's mouth with a little encouragement, by way of stroking his throat, the guy would swallow. This was a good thing because the doctors weren't feeding him anything and he had yet to see an I.V. in his arm. So Kyo kept feeding him what he could and laughed when the doctors had to install a catheter because of it.

Kyo picked at the rice with the chopsticks he had confiscated from the cafeteria earlier in the week. He really wanted to get out of the freaky hospital and he wanted to take the catatonic guy with him. There were bad people in the place and very few of the patients belonged there. Kyo was especially freaked out by the orange-haired guy who had been in a couple of times to check over "his Siberian" in both Japanese and some foreign language. He was more than a little insane by the gleam in his eyes. And Kyo felt overly relieved that the guy had not found him hiding under the 'bed.'

After finishing his meal, Kyo poured a little water down the catatonic guy's throat and a little down his own. Then being satisfied with the amount of water they had both imbibed, he climbed on top of the table and curled against the other. The room wasn't particularly warm and neither of them had very much on so Kyo thought it best to share whatever body heat they could.

"So let me get this straight, you're telling me that your entire family is cursed to turn into animals every time they feel a strong emotion?" Yohji asked, incredulous.

"Well, not all of us," Shigure extemporized. "There are twelve of us Zodiac members if you count Kyo and each time one of us dies another is born in our place. So the whole family is cursed but only a few of us have two shapes.

"Oh," Yohji looked like he was about to die from too much information input.

"It's really dangerous for us to do anything outside of the family because it puts the secret at the risk of public knowledge," Yuki put in, his breathing a little ragged as the activities of earlier caught up with him. "We do have some friends though." He looked at Shigure. "I wonder how Tohru is doing. And Kyo…"

Shigure's face darkened a little. "We can only hope for the best," he replied and put his arm around Yuki's shoulders.

Omi got quietly up from his place on the sofa and went to the specially rigged mission computer. He cracked all his knuckles, neck and spine before sitting down at the machine. Aya and Yohji could entertain their guests well enough, he had work to do. The first thing he brought up on screen was a search engine, time to so a little research on the Sohma family.

The freaky orange-haired guy was back. And he was talking crazy again. Kyo never could understand what he was saying when he spoke in that foreign language, but today he was speaking in Japanese. He was threatening everyone around him. Something about the guy on the table, something about the kitty getting better, he'd thought that he was the only Kitty so that made absolutely no sense to him. All tangled up in that was a suspicion about somebody on the outside fixing up the catatonic guy. Kyo just pulled himself closer under the table.

Finally, all the people in the room convinced the guy to leave. Kyo had decided by this time that he and this 'kitty' guy had to get out of there. The guy was in an emaciated state and he wasn't much better himself though he could still sneak around to scrounge for food. They were both quite rank as well, neither of them had taken care of hygiene in what must have been nearly three weeks. It was killing him being trapped inside for so long.

So once he had waited for a reasonable amount of time, Kyo headed out the door in a lab coat he had snagged from a hook in some forgotten room. Wending his way through the halls he looked for doors and windows that might lead to the outside. That was when he noticed that there were no windows at all. They must be underground he decided. From then on he peeked into the doors he deemed safe to see if they lead to stairs or elevators, anything to get him up to the surface. There was nothing in any of the rooms he dared check. He found his way back to the room with the catatonic guy and hunkered down under the bed again. There was no hope. He just barely managed to keep his temper under control enough to not destroy anything.

Over the course of the weeks they spent together the five men who stayed above the Koneko No Sume Ie found themselves settling into a routine. Yuki had been enrolled into a school with Omi and each day they went together and each day they were followed into the shop by a horde of school girls. Aya and Yohji ran the store during the day with the minor help of Shigure (He was not allowed to work the afternoon shift with all the high school girls.). In the evenings they shared dinner in the kitchen around the table that was a little too small for the five of them.

Night found Yuki and Omi sharing a bedroom to ward off the nightmares that plagued them both. Before the incident three weeks past Omi would have slept in Ken's room but oftener now he found it was Yuki coming in to sleep with him. The three older men thought that the two younger didn't know it but the three of them were sharing a bed for a little more than comfort. Omi had seen Aya walk out of Yohji's room the other morning followed by Shigure.

Everything was settling into a normal pattern. Omi had been continuing to hack into Schwarz and ß had finally found some clues as to the whereabouts of their missing companions, or of Ken at least. Records of a person of Ken's description were in the files of the ß hospital they had been trying to blow up when they had rescued the Sohma boys. They could only hope that Kyo was still there.

He was planning on breaking the news to them tonight in hopes that they could begin planning a retrieval and demolition of said people and building. But he really didn't want Shigure and Yuki to be involved. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, but he wasn't sure they could handle themselves when it came down to the kill. He didn't want them to be involved in that. Ever. He wanted them to stay innocent of that as long as he knew them. Which with Yuki he wanted to be forever.

Yuki walked into the room and looked over Omi's shoulder. The screen had already been changed to something else so that whoever had walked in would not know what Omi was truly working on.

"Having fun, Omittchi?" the other boy asked in his low purr of a voice.

Omi blushed and stammered out, "Don't call me that Yuki-kun."

"But you're so cute when you blush," Omi realized then that Yuki was shamelessly teasing him in a manner that suggested that he shared Omi's interest. "Yo-tan asked me to come get you for dinner."

"Okay. I'm coming. You head upstairs and I'll be up in minute with some stuff we need to talk about."


End file.
